I need answers please!

karmellclark

March 30th Orangetheory opened in town. From day 1, I have been going religiously. Some times even getting in two workouts a day and resting one day a week. I have tracked every bite of food and have been watching my macros like a forensic scientist. I started at 225 and now at 212. I have two questions…one how do you balance macros? Seriously, I can be spot on for carbs and fat and 100 more needed in protein, so then you eat something to get the protein but it then takes you over the carb and fat goal. It’s quite mind numbing. Second question. Do you eat even if you aren’t hungry? I feel that on most days I’m choking down food to try and meet my macro goals but have no appetite at all. Oh one more question. MFP adds additional calories to be consumed if you have exercised. Do you? Or do you try and stick to the original calorie number?

csplatt

What’s up with the two a days!? Do you enjoy it that much or do you want to lose weight as much as possible? I’d say cut those out then you won’t need to eat so much. I loved OTF when I was a member. Their movements were fairly repetitive though which can be tough on joints so I’m not sure I’d want to go 5-6 x a week myself. I stick to two then cross trained other ways!

AnnPT77

Macros don't need to be exactly exact every single day. Pretty close on average over a few days is fine.

If you're persistently very low on protein, that's IMO a problem from a nutrition and health standpoint. I'd suggest chipping away at improving your routine eating habits so that that falls into place in the longer run. Protein and fats are both technically "essential nutrients" in the sense that our bodies can't manufacture some of their components out of anything else, so we need to eat a certain minimum of them. Carbs are more flexible in that sense (not "essential").

It's fine to be over on fats or protein or both, within calories (and within reason, i.e., you'll want some other foods in there for nutritional reasons, like for fiber and micronutrients). It's fine to be over on carbs, too, as long as not persistently low on protein/fats.

For weight loss, calories are the key thing. Macros are about health, energy level, maintaining our muscles and bones, etc. But most of us want to be healthy, not just slim, right?

I'm kind of with csplatt about the workouts, too: If you enjoy two a days, go for it. But if it's not something you see yourself happily doing long term, I'd encourage you to settle into habits that give you good overall life balance. People often say that maintenance is harder than loss, and finding/practicing those habits during loss is IMO a good plan.

I do eat back all my carefully-estimated exercise calories, and have all through loss and around 8 years of maintenance since. That doesn't typically cause over-fullness for me, though. Fortunately or unfortunately, thin me still has the eating capacity of obese me (although I'm not saying I'm hungry all the time now, either, just that fullness doesn't limit me from eating the calories I know I need in order to thrive).

That does assume that my base calorie goal was estimated without my planned exercise, as MFP's instructions indicate. With around 9 years of logging experience, loss then maintenance, I have my calorie needs pretty well dialed in, and I like that I can maintain (now) whether I get in some exercise, or don't. (I like what I do to stay active, but there have been occasional stretches of illness, surgical recovery, or whatever, where exercise wasn't happening in the usual way.)

I do occasionally eat even if I'm not truly hungry, if I'm way under on a nutritional goal that's important to me. In those cases, I'm probably looking for the least-filling option that gets my nutritional averages around where I want them, though. One rare day of lower calories/nutrition wouldn't really matter, either. It's the majority of days that deliver the majority of our results, y'know?

Best wishes!